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Monday, January 11, 2010

Caryl's Linen

I think it's been at least a year now that one of my good friends, Caryl Moskoff, gave me a beautiful linen. I was so excited to turn this into a quilt I bought several books for design selections...I needed something to fill in all of those squares. I marked and removed the designs three different times...nothing worked. As the rest of you Linen Ladies know the linens are NEVER square and each little square was just a titch off. I finally put it back into my stash out of frustration.

At the end of the year when Christmas was over I went thru my stash and selected four linens to work on this year and this was one of them. I followed my own advice to my students and followed the KISS rule...keep it simple! This simple repetitive cathedral window feather design allows for fudging, doesn't highlight the imperfections and it works! I placed my design on my light table and traced my design 121 times in the 3 1/2" blocks. I basted the linen using four layers...backing, batting, underlayment and then the linen. Daiwabo fabric was selected for the backing, Hobbs 100% cotton for the batting, Kauffman's Radiance for the underlayment and Superior Threads' Highlights and Bottom Line for the threads. Of course I had to make a special trip to the bead store to buy some beautiful dark greenish/tan freshwater pearls for the embellishing.

Since this has so many squares to quilt I decided to quilt the designs in four block sections and go diagonally through the middle each way. Then I can go back and fill in the quadrants. This not only helps to evenly quilt the piece it also gives me the satisfaction of getting small sections done.

I will document the progress of Caryl's linen quilt and also begin the journeys on the other three coming up. Thank you Caryl for such an amazing gift...aren't you glad I've finally started on it???? Cindy :)